Camelot's Court: Inside the Kennedy White House Read online

  Dedication

  To our grandchildren

  Hannah Bender

  Ethan Bender

  Sammy Sarathy-Dallek

  Contents

  Dedication

  Introduction

  Chapter 1 - John F. Kennedy: Prelude to a Presidency

  Chapter 2 - Robert Kennedy: Adviser-in-Chief

  Chapter 3 - “A Ministry of Talent”

  Chapter 4 - “Never Rely on the Experts”

  Chapter 5 - “Roughest Thing in My Life”

  Chapter 6 - Advice and Dissent

  Chapter 7 - “The Greatest Adventure of Our Century”

  Chapter 8 - “If We Listen to Them, None of Us Will Be Alive”

  Chapter 9 - “Mankind Must Put an End to War”

  Chapter 10 - “The Two of You Did Visit the Same Country, Didn’t You?”

  Epilogue - “What He Is Slated to Become Depends on Us”

  Notes

  Bibliography

  Acknowledgments

  Index

  Photo Insert

  About the Author

  Also by Robert Dallek

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Introduction

  Some presidents hold an endless fascination for Americans: Washington, Lincoln, the two Roosevelts, and more recently John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan. The public’s interest has a lot to do with its craving for heroes or, probably more important, its wish to understand and revel in what constitutes effective leadership. In a nation that often feels adrift in an uncertain world, where domestic and foreign crises repeatedly endanger the country’s well-being, great presidents are a comfort—a sort of salve for the national psyche.

  The affinity for presidential heroes goes far to explain a 2010 Gallup poll asking Americans to assess the last nine presidents from John F. Kennedy to George W. Bush. The survey gave Kennedy an astonishing 85 percent approval rating; only Reagan was in hailing distance of him, with 74 percent. In 2003, having published An Unfinished Life, a biography of Kennedy, I lived with the proposition that you write a book to forget a subject. But the poll rekindled my interest in Kennedy’s leadership. In my first go-round on Kennedy’s presidency, I saw ample reason for enthusiasm about parts of his performance, but 85 percent? Did the public have a better understanding of his leadership than I did? What was I missing? I understand that his assassination at the age of forty-six gives him a special hold on the country’s sympathy. Moreover, his personal attributes and inspirational call for national commitments viewed in contrast to the flawed Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and two Bush administrations have heightened Kennedy’s attractiveness. Still, the public’s conviction that he was so outstanding a chief on par with Washington, Lincoln, and the two Roosevelts is open to question.

  Perhaps the best way to understand and assess Kennedy’s presidential performance is through his interactions with the men whom Ted Sorensen, his speechwriter and political adviser, called his “Ministry of Talent.” They were an extraordinary group of academics, businessmen, lawyers, foreign policy and national security experts, and career military officers who advised Kennedy in the many crises they confronted during his thousand-day presidency. Their focus was on the dangers to the country’s safety posed by communist challenges in the Western Hemisphere, Europe, and Southeast Asia. They counseled Kennedy on the critical decisions that could make a difference between war and peace.

  The backgrounds, aspirations, convictions, and judgments of the men around Kennedy are an essential part of understanding why and how they advised him.

  Each in his own way was a combatant in a struggle to persuade the president that he had the best—if not always the right—answer to the various intimidating challenges they faced at home and particularly abroad, where the danger of a catastrophic war was constantly before them. They fought with each other—sometimes angrily, fearful that the opposing views of their colleagues could lead to disaster. Their passion was the product of genuine concern to serve the country and prevent the ultimate world catastrophe. But it also reflected the vanity of egotistical men who felt slighted by any rejection of their outlook when they were pushed aside, and several of them were. Kennedy took no pleasure in slighting them, but he saw the stakes as so high that he could not afford to tread lightly or put personal feelings ahead of hard decisions. He took comfort from knowing that every administration had its share of conflicts and unhappy advisers and that he had not forced any of them to assume the burdens of office.

  Much of the White House tension sprang from the administration’s focus on painfully difficult foreign policy questions. Yet Kennedy could not ignore domestic conflicts. They roiled the nation’s stability and forced the president and Robert Kennedy, his brother and principal adviser, to devote attention to internal problems. The Kennedys were not indifferent to homegrown difficulties, especially the plight of African Americans. However privileged they were, as members of a minority group they despised the prejudice against blacks of segregation and wished to eliminate it. But they saw little chance to advance equal rights through Congress as long as southern congressmen and senators chaired crucial committees. By putting civil rights aside until 1963 or aiming for marginal gains through executive action, they hoped to pass other domestic reforms that could benefit all Americans, including African Americans.

  Given existing conditions and the president’s affinity for foreign affairs, however, the administration made domestic change a secondary priority. The main mission of the White House was to inhibit communist advance and avert a nuclear war. Immediately after the Cuban Bay of Pigs failure, in language the latter would understand, Kennedy told Richard Nixon, who shared his conviction about national priorities, “It really is true that foreign affairs is the only important issue for a president to handle, isn’t it? I mean, who gives a shit if the minimum wage is $1.15 or $1.25, in comparison to something like this?” On more than one occasion, Kennedy said domestic politics can unseat you, but foreign dangers can kill you. The extent to which this outlook dominated Kennedy’s thinking is reflected in the many, almost daily, meetings he held with officials from the State and Defense departments, the CIA, and Pentagon as compared to the occasional discussions he had with those responsible for managing domestic affairs.

  The Kennedy who will emerge from the pages of this book is an astute judge of character and reasoned policy. He was an imperfect man whose foibles made him receptive to some bad advice that triggered misjudgments. Moreover, although I can imagine different outcomes in a second term, Cuba and Vietnam demonstrated his limited capacity to overcome all the foreign policy challenges of his thousand days. But these shortcomings were only a part of the story. His attribute as a quick learner helped make him an effective leader, particularly in restraining the actions of his military chiefs during crises that could have resulted in a nuclear war. His successes eclipsed the failings of his thousand days.

  Kennedy’s interactions with his Ministry of Talent not only enrich our understanding of his presidency; they also serve as useful cautionary tales for voters considering future aspirants to the Oval Office and judging those candidates’ ability to meet the day-to-day problems of governing. Above all, the story of Kennedy and his advisers may remind us that the men and women we entrust with power are talented public servants who occasionally fall short of what we hope they will achieve but deserve our regard for assuming the heavy burdens of responsibility that come to every administration.

  RD

  Washington, D.C.

  March 2013

  CHAPTER 1

  John F. Kenned
y: Prelude to a Presidency

  Every presidency begins in a fog of uncertainty. The most ordinary of our chiefs, whose administrations left unremarkable legacies, never figured out how to make enduring contributions to the country. Even America’s three most notable White House occupants—George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin D. Roosevelt—initially puzzled, respectively, over how to launch, preserve, and rescue the ship of state.

  Small wonder then that at the start of his presidency John F. Kennedy struggled to fulfill amorphous promises to secure the country from foreign dangers, restore prosperity, and end bitter racial divisions threatening public tranquility. Above all, he feared a crisis that could bring the world to the brink of a nuclear war. It cast a shadow over the realization that he would be the responsible official deciding the fate of millions everywhere. What would he do? He had no clear idea. After he heard that historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. wanted a White House appointment rather than an ambassadorship, Kennedy told him: “‘So, Arthur, I hear you are coming to the White House.’ ‘I am,’” Schlesinger replied. “‘What will I be doing there?’ ‘I don’t know,’” Kennedy responded. “‘I don’t know what I’ll be doing there, but you can bet we will both be busy more than eight hours a day.’”

  Like Lincoln in the midst of the Civil War, Kennedy instinctively met the burdens of office with humor that he hoped would insulate him from the anguish of potentially catastrophic decisions. But fourteen years of political activism—running twice for the House and twice for the Senate—had also imbued him with instrumental cynicism. The objective in his presidential campaign, for example, had been not to describe how he would fix the country’s problems, but to win the election. He was following a well-developed tradition. The details of governing would have to come later.

  Immediately after being elected, Kennedy was too tired to define how and where he would lead the nation. He was exhausted. His reach for the White House, which had begun in 1957 and consumed every waking hour during 1960, had drained his energies and left him ill-prepared for the arduous work ahead in the Oval Office. Health problems, including Addison’s disease—a possibly fatal malfunctioning of the adrenal gland—chronic back pain that had led to major unsuccessful surgeries, spastic colitis that triggered occasional bouts of diarrhea, prostatitis, urethritis, and allergies, had added greatly to the normal strains of a nationwide campaign.

  But voters knew little about Kennedy’s lifelong illnesses, which had hospitalized him nine times for a total of forty-four days between 1955 and 1957. Only forty-three years old when he ran for the presidency, and masterful at giving the impression of youthful vigor, he had managed to mute questions about his capacity to meet the demands of governing. Yet during the campaign, political rivals had stirred suspicions about his health: Senate Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson, his principal challenger for the Democratic nomination, had encouraged journalists to inquire about his Addison’s disease, describing Kennedy to one reporter as “a little scrawny fellow with rickets.” Moreover, during the fall run against Republican Richard Nixon, break-ins of two Kennedy doctors’ New York offices suggest that, like the 1968 Watergate burglary, the Nixon campaign was trying to steal medical records that could decide the election outcome. When a medical bag containing Jack’s many medications went missing during the campaign, he was frantic to recover it—because of the political consequences rather than any threat to his health. “It would be murder,” he told a political ally, if it got into the wrong hands.

  Responding to Kennedy’s frail appearance at a press conference the day after his election and unsubstantiated rumors about his health, a reporter asked whether talk about the president-elect’s questionable fitness was true. Kennedy dismissed the inquiry with a wave of his hand and assurance that he was in “excellent” shape. Yet Ted Sorensen, his principal Senate aide and speechwriter, recalled that Kennedy’s mind was neither “keen” nor “clear” two weeks after his election. He “still seemed tired then and reluctant to face up to the details of personnel and program selection.” Kennedy aides felt compelled to follow up with public declarations that he was in “superb physical condition,” assuring everyone that he was fully prepared to handle the demands of the presidency.

  Kennedy echoed his doubts about satisfying the incessant demands from so many quarters with expressions of uncertainty about identifying and convincing the best people to serve in his cabinet and subcabinet. He told two of his aides: “For the last four years I spent so much time getting to know people who could help me get elected President that I didn’t have any time to get to know people who could help me, after I was elected, to be a good President.”

  All thirty-five of Kennedy’s presidential predecessors could have made the same complaint: The road to the White House was so uncertain, especially for the handful who ascended to the job from the vice presidency upon a president’s death, that plans for how they would perform in office were never in the forefront of their thinking. Campaign rhetoric about managing current national and international problems was never more than that. Platforms and promises always told less about a president’s coming agenda than calculations about appealing to majority sentiment.

  Kennedy’s route to the prize was as fortuitous as that of all who entered the office before him. True, his father’s dream of seeing one of his sons in the White House and having the financial resources to make it happen certainly made Kennedy’s ambitions more realizable than the presidential aspirations of men whose wealth and connections never matched his. Other conditions gave Jack an additional leg up. He was raised in a family that regularly breathed, talked, and consumed politics on a daily basis. His grandfathers were larger-than-life public figures who shadowed his early years and made him proud to be a Fitzgerald and a Kennedy. As important, their public visibility put a Kennedy entering Boston politics one step ahead of rivals.

  Patrick Joseph Kennedy, Jack’s paternal grandfather, was an upwardly mobile Boston Irishman who made it big. Although P.J., as he was affectionately known, lived only until 1929, when Jack was twelve, his accomplishments and affluence were family lore. Forced to work on the Boston docks at the age of fourteen as a stevedore to help support his widowed mother and three older sisters, P.J. used savings to forge a business career as the owner of three taverns and a whiskey importing company that made him a leading figure in the city’s liquor trade. His standing as a successful East Boston businessman and a concern with the needs of the city’s Irish population drew him into a political career as a five-term member of the Massachusetts lower house and a two-term state senator. As a prominent Boston Democrat, he was a member of the state’s delegation to the 1884 national convention, where he gave a seconding speech for New York governor Grover Cleveland, the party’s presidential nominee. Giving up elective office in 1895, P.J. spent the rest of his life as one of Boston’s four principal Democratic Party ward bosses, choosing candidates for local and statewide offices and distributing patronage. As a part owner of a coal company and a bank, the Columbia Trust, P.J. established himself as one of the city’s principal power brokers and wealthier members of what was locally called the “cut glass” set, or FIFs, “First Irish Families.”

  Jack’s maternal grandfather, John F. Fitzgerald, was even more prominent than P.J. and was more instrumental in drawing his grandson into politics. Honey Fitz, as his followers lovingly called him, entered the political arena at age twenty-two as a Customs House clerk and secretary to one of Boston’s leading Democratic bosses. He won his first election at age twenty-eight, in 1891 as a member of the Boston Common Council and simultaneously became ward boss of the North End when his mentor, the man he had been serving as secretary, died.

  Fitz’s meteoric rise in local politics rested on a natural affinity for the calling. An affable, charming character, with the gift of gab described as Fitzblarney, he loved people and center stage. “Fitzie,” as the “dearos,” the name he gave to his devoted supporters, also called him, was celebrated in a verse
extolling his political virtues: “Honey Fitz can talk you blind / on any subject you can find / Fish and fishing, motor boats / Railroads, streetcars, getting votes.” His oldest daughter said, “There was no one in the world like my father. Wherever he was, there was magic in the air.”

  His personal appeal translated into repeated victories at the polls. In 1894, after two years as a state senator, he began a six-year run as Massachusetts’s only Democratic congressman and one of three Catholics in the House, where he established himself as the voice of an aggrieved Irish minority. The patrician Massachusetts senator Henry Cabot Lodge symbolized their sense of exclusion. Lodge’s haughty manner and demeanor reminded them of the saying that up in Boston, “the Lowells speak only to the Cabots and the Cabots speak only to God.” They delighted in the story of Fitzgerald’s rebuke of Lodge when the senator lectured Fitzgerald on the corrupting influence of immigrants: “Do you think the Jews or the Italians have any right in this country?” Lodge asked. “As much right as your father or mine. It was only a difference of a few ships,” Fitzgerald responded.

  In 1905 Fitzgerald became Boston’s mayor, signaling the emergence of the city’s Irish as the principal political force and launching a personal dynasty lasting forty-five years. Although press stories about city hall corruption and rumors of an affair with Elizabeth “Toodles” Ryan, a beautiful cigarette girl at a local nightclub, marked his career as mayor, it little diminished Fitzie’s hold on his Irish constituents, who loved him and his antics as a defiance of the city’s imperious Brahmins. When Honey Fitz died at the age of eighty-seven in 1950, more than 3,500 people attended the church service. It impressed his grandson as a demonstration of “the extraordinary impact a politician can have on the emotions of ordinary people.”

  No one, however, contributed more to Kennedy’s pre-presidential political career than his parents. His mother, Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, was her father’s favorite child. Her status as an attractive Boston debutante closely identified with her ethnic and religious roots made her a favorite of the city’s aspiring Irish. They could imagine their sons and daughters sharing her rise to prominence that rivaled the standing of the town’s Protestant elite. Her marriage to P.J.’s son, Joseph P. Kennedy, a brilliantly successful banker, and her visibility as the mother of nine sons and daughters gave her children instant fame that could open the way to a potentially stunning public career.